Women’s and Gender Studies is an interdisciplinary program dedicated to analyzing the ways in which power, privilege, and positionality shape women’s diverse social experiences. We adopt the analytical framework of intersectionality to investigate how multiple categories of social difference such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and disability interact to produce interlocking systems of oppression that impact the most marginalized groups in society.
Our courses seek to make visible and interrogate power relations that result in the marginalization of women, people of color, and others affected by structural injustices. Students will learn about the historical and contemporary contributions of women from a global perspective, to identify and analyze stereotypes and forms of discrimination related to women and gender, and to inquire into the diversity of experiences among women and within the spectrum of gender.
Majors and minors are encouraged to reflect on the ethical commitments that inform their understandings of themselves and the social institutions in which they participate. Methods of feminist pedagogy are used in our courses, namely teaching techniques that encourage student participation, active learning, and egalitarian exchange among students and the instructor. Our students have multiple opportunities to bridge feminist theory and social practice by conceptualizing and realizing collective activist projects during their senior year and in multiple women's and gender studies courses. Women's and gender studies graduates are making a difference in a wide range of fields including social work, law, public health, politics and public policy, nonprofit organizations and the arts.
This course examines how ideas about sex, gender, and work have intertwined and changed across U.S. history. It considers both how women have negotiated sex and sexuality in their work—including wanted and unwanted sexual advances in the workplace—and how activism around issues of sex, sexual assault, and rape has itself been work. This course will pay special attention to women’s experiences of sexual harassment both in and outside the workplace. Students will consider how the history of unwanted sexual attention informs present-day debates and activism around these issues, up to and including the #MeToo movement.
This course examines some of the most significant conflicts and turning points in the history of conception, pregnancy, and childbirth in Europe and its Caribbean slave colonies from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. We approach women’s reproductive bodies as contested sites of political struggle over issues as diverse as slavery, colonialism, population growth and birth control, religious reform, midwifery, the medicalization of childbirth, and nation-building. Centering women’s voices and experiences of the birth process where the sources allow us, we study the cultures and communities that women of diverse racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds constructed around biological reproduction.
A survey and critical evaluation of research investigating the psychological and social factors in sexual behavior with some attention to the underlying biology. A comparison and contrast across species, across individuals, and across cultures. Topics include partner preference, sexual dysfunction and treatment, changes across the life span, and commercial sex. Readings include selections from works that have changed the American understanding of sexual behavior.
This course traces German queer cinema from the earliest representations of gay and lesbian sexual orientations in 1920s Weimar to topics such as sexual indeterminacy and the queering of nationality and migrant culture in contemporary films. The course examines how films both represent and produce non-normative sexual desires and identities. It also considers sexual and gender identity in relation to particular historical and cultural moments as well as to other constituting experiences (taught in English.)
This course explores the intersection of Western music with sex, gender, and sexuality. Students apply concepts from the field of women’s and gender studies to analyze the construction of gender in music and musical discourse, as well as the roles sex and gender play in the careers, output, and reception of classical and popular musicians. Set at an intermediate level, this course assumes students have previous familiarity with basic musical concepts, including melody, harmony, major/minor tonality, and meter.
An examination of the history and criticism of American women's oratory and the history of women's public discourse in the United States from the colonial period through the present. Considers the historical, social, and cultural significance of women's rhetorical participation in civic life, as well as issues of authority, reception, and the nature of argument both within and about women's public address.
This course explores and analyzes a selection of films directed by women in the Spanish and Hispanic American context. The course reviews theoretical approaches to women’s cinema and considers the transnational nature of film production. The course is organized chronologically and deals with topics of gender and sexuality, politics of representation and memory, and other social and global issues.
A consideration of the role of women in literature. Topics include Gothic fiction, nineteenth and twentieth century women writers, and women in fiction. Drawing on authors of both genders, the course considers gender relations, the historic role of women, the special challenges that have faced women writers, and the role of women in fiction.
Dr. Jamie Capuzza joined the faculty of The University of the South in Fall 2024. Previously, she chaired the Department of Communication, and she served as director of both the Honors Program and the Gender Studies Program at the University of Mount Union. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Havana in Cuba; Christ University in Bangalore, India; University of Shanghai, Luneburg University in Germany, University of Turin in Italy; Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, and the University of Pais Vasco in Bilbao, Spain.
Dr. Cerja's primary research agenda focuses on examining the representations of Black women in the public sphere, political sphere, and media. She has also published research on feminist pedagogy and alt-right diet culture. Dr. Cerja specializes in teaching courses about Black women's politics, social movements, public address, and popular culture. She recently just finished working as Spring Book Distribution Coordinator for her favorite local non-profit Books for Keeps, which focuses on improving literacy in Athens, Georgia.
Dr. Lehn is committed to investigating the ways that rhetoric imagines and sustains our democratic practices and communities. At Sewanee, she teaches courses in Public Speaking, Teaching Speaking and Listening, Argumentation and Debate, and Voices of American Women. Professor Lehn also researches and writes at the intersection of rhetoric, politics, and gender, with an interest in the public addresses of American political women. She has presented more than thirty research papers at state, regional, national, and international conferences, and her work has appeared various prestigious publications. Her co-edited collection One Hundred Years of Women Debating the Equal Rights Amendment: An Anthology, 1923-2023, will be published by Peter Lang in November 2024.
Andrea Mansker is a modern Europeanist who specializes in French and Francophone cultural, intellectual, and gender history. Her research interests include the history of honor, sexuality, and feminism in Third Republic France.
Mansker offers courses on European cultural and intellectual history, revolutionary Europe and the Atlantic world, modern France, and the history of women, gender, sexuality, and crime.
Among the 22 new professors joining the College this semester is Sewanee’s first-ever faculty cohort: the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Scholars. Hired as a cohort, the three new tenure-track professors will be affiliated with the University’s TRHT Center.
Sophomore Makenzie Pentz, a Women’s and Gender Studies and Classics double major from Crossville, Tennessee, recently presented her paper “Monica Lewinsky: From Scandal to Social Activism.” Pentz’s paper argues that Lewinsky “has developed a platform of activism against cyberbullying and has since given speeches that deserve examination for their historical significance in women’s rhetoric,” especially within the context of the #MeToo Movement.
Join Kim Heitzenrater and Sewanee Career Readiness for #LifeAfterSewaneeLIVE on Thursday at 10 a.m. (central) on Instagram Live. Each week, graduates from a diverse range of fields and levels of experience share insight into their careers, key decisions or actions that made a difference, how their time at Sewanee developed career-readiness, and advice for those launching their careers.
This week, our guest will be Armonté Butler, C’17: MPH Candidate and Bloomberg Fellow at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and LGBTQ Health and Rights Senior Program Manager at Advocates for Youth.
Jessica Osaki and her husband, Houston Howell, both class of 2002, have just made a lead gift to create an endowment for the Julie Berebitsky Prize, which will be established to honor the graduating senior who writes the best senior thesis in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program.
On Tuesday, February 25, Professor Belinda A. Stillion Southard will deliver a lecture entitled "100 Years with Woman Suffrage: Prison, Protests, and Promise." The lecture will begin at 4:30 p.m. in the Torian Room, and light refreshments and a book signing will follow. We hope to see you there, and hope that you will encourage your students to attend!
mjlehn@sewanee.edu
The Bairnwick Women’s Center is a student-led movement that seeks to educate and empower the Sewanee community by promoting social justice, equality, and voice. Challenge notions of traditional understanding. Commit to open and honest dialogue. Provide a platform for many voices.
The Ayres Multicultural Center is a setting where you and other members of your community from different backgrounds can come together for quality time, conversation, and events. A student body and a curriculum that reflect the diversity of our society are important features of any college experience.
As part of their capstone experience, all Women's and Gender Studies majors and minors work in teams to transform feminist theory and methodologies into praxis. Students are asked to reflect on some of the most important contemporary feminist issues facing young people of their generation and to collectively accomplish a concrete form of activism on a local, national, and/or global scale.
